182 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



of a man under orders of the missionary at 

 Kuboos, which is still haunted by the ghost of 

 an institution established by the London Mis- 

 sionary Society in years long gone by. An- 

 other was a reported discovery of gold. This, 

 as a matter of fact was my ostensible excuse 

 for starting at the time I did. Third and last 

 was my own keen desire to explore a little- 

 known tract and make the acquaintance of its 

 human and other inhabitants. 



The Richtersveld, according to report, was 

 extremely mountainous and was said to con- 

 tain only some two hundred people of Kor- 

 anna-Bushman and Hottentot descent. So 

 remote and isolated was this region that its 

 dwellers were tacitly permitted to govern 

 themselves. They had a " raad " or council 

 of elders which, under presidency of the mis- 

 sionary, settled all disputes and generally ad- 

 ministered justice, informal, but none the 

 less just on that account. The language spo- 

 ken by the Richtersvelders is an almost extinct 

 Hottentot dialect, full of clicks, gutterals and 

 phonetic excursions impossible to the average 

 European tongue. Only a few of the people 

 had even the merest smattering of Dutch. 



That excursion involved more difficulties 

 than any other I had undertaken. There was, 



